Smash Up: Cease and Desist and It’s Your Fault

The Toledo Tuesdays Gaming Club has been playing Smash Up ( Smash Up at AEG ) for quite some time. If you are not familiar with the game, basically each player selects 2 20 card decks, each with a different theme and “smashes” them together to make a 40 card deck. Possible combinations are Zombie Faeries, Ninja Steampunks, Time Traveller Giant Ants, etc. I think you get the idea. The game is basically about using Actions and playing Minions to win bases. Get to 15 Victory Points first and you win. It’s fun stuff, not too serious, and pretty much anybody can play it. The gameplay is pretty deep, mainly because like most card-driven games, finding combinations and playing your cards right are the paths to victory.

Anyway, at Gen Con 2016 I picked up two new expansions: Cease and Desist and It’s Your Fault! The former contains decks that are parodies of sci-fi/fantasy movies & TV. For instance, the Star Roamers are clearly Star Trek.

Star Roamers

And the ChangerBots are Transformers.

ChangerBots. They turn into bicycles and RVs! Hilarious stuff!

And of course there has to be a Star Wars deck!

Astroknights = Star Wars

The latter expansion is a set of decks with themes chosen by fans. It includes Dragons, Sharks, Tornados, Greek Gods, etc.

Stew was away, so Neal, Lee and Bob got in a game of Smash Up using only the latest expansions. Neal was Dragons & Sharks, Lee chose Astroknights and Ignobles (think Game of Thrones) and Bob was Mythic Greeks plus Tornados.

The game was quite fun with Lee causing mayhem by giving his Minions to Bob and I and then whipping them back (the Ignobles are sneaky!). The Tornados kept Bob’s Minions moving around while Neal’s Dragons and Sharks were all about brute force! In the end, Neal won mainly because of the card “Shark Week” which allows the Shark player to draw an extra card every turn. Here is an example of the play:

Example of play

Our opinion was that the two expansions were some of the most fun and well-balanced decks yet from AEG. If you haven’t played Smash Up, starting with Cease and Desist and It’s Your Fault! would be a great way to get introduced to the game.

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